Obama and Netanyahu: A Story of Slights and Crossed Signals

November 8, 2015 9:54 PM

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WASHINGTON — For President Obama, it was a day of celebration. He had just signed the most important domestic measure of his presidency, his health care program. So when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel arrived at the White House for a hastily arranged visit, it was likely not the main thing on his mind.

To White House officials, it was a show of respect to make time for Mr. Netanyahu on that day back in March 2010. But Mr. Netanyahu did not see it that way. He felt squeezed in, not accorded the rituals of such a visit. No photographers were invited to record the moment. “That wasn’t a good way to t...

The tortured relationship between Barack and Bibi, as they call each other, has been a story of crossed signals, misunderstandings, slights perceived and real. Burdened by mistrust, divided by ideology, the leaders of the United States and Israel talked past each other for years until the rupture over Mr. with led to the spectacle of Mr. Netanyahu before a joint meeting of Congress.

If the current animosity between the United States and Israel is not unique in the history of relations between the two governments, it is the worst in more than two decades. Mr. Netanyahu feels disrespected and misled by a president he thinks does not have Israel’s best interests at heart. Mr. Obama feels aggrieved at being portrayed as anti-Israel even though he has provided extensive security aid and fought efforts to seek recognition as a state at the United Nations.

“My sense is they each thought they could get the better of the other,” said Mara Rudman, a former deputy envoy for Middle East peace under Mr. Obama. “They’re competitive. And I don’t know that that sense of competition ever dissipated.”

Uzi Arad, Mr. Netanyahu’s former national security adviser, said no single issue had caused the rift. “It was a gradual thing that widened over time,” he said. “History will probably say that both leaders mismanaged their relationship. It’s not one party.”

“They have a fraught relationship and it’s fueled by a belief on the part of both of them that the other is trying to screw them, trip them up, thwart their policies, corner them, ambush them,” said Martin Indyk, the president’s former special envoy to the Middle East. “They each have a number of cases where they feel the other acted in bad faith.”